The two of them were actually thousands of miles apart.
Sang Li didn’t care about any of that, though. Feeling extremely wronged, he sobbed tearfully over the phone: “Husband, hurry up and come pick me up, my feet are so tired and I can’t walk anymore!”
Jiang Xiucheng frowned, lowering his head to check the real-time tracking signal on his phone, which showed he was already away from home.
Anyone who looked closely enough would realize that Jiang Xiucheng’s signal tracking had even been refined down to specific minutes, seconds, and locations, active twenty-four hours a day without interruption. This was no longer ordinary location sharing; it was a form of surveillance completely stripped of human rights and privacy.
Yet, Sang Li had no idea.
Amidst the bustling crowds, he looked both obstructive and redundant. After being jostled and shoved this way and that for a while, he squatted down against a wall, his head drooping like a newly sprouted, pretty little poisonous mushroom. Looking both haughty and panicked, he asked in a tiny voice: “Husband, why aren’t you saying anything?!”
Spoiled rotten by habit, Sang Li was both cowardly and disobedient, yet terrified of Jiang Xiucheng blaming him. He decided to strike first: “You are not allowed to scold me, I already know I was wrong!”
“I…”
Sang Li was already extremely nervous to begin with. Cowering in a tiny ball in the corner, he vigilantly looked left and right at the surrounding crowd. Midway through his sentence, he let out a crying hiccup, making him sound even more pitiful: “I tried really hard to find the way, but Li Li couldn’t find it.”
Jiang Xiucheng’s heart was squeezed hard in response, the trembling causing a dull ache.
“Don’t cry. Baobei, don’t be afraid,” Jiang Xiucheng said.
The Jiang family had numerous collateral branches, and people usually only got a chance to see Jiang Xiucheng on occasions like this. Therefore, even in the middle of the night, a large crowd had gathered here. On the surface, they claimed to keep vigil for their ancestors, but in reality, they merely wanted to cozy up and build connections with Jiang Xiucheng.
Sang Li’s phone call completely shattered this superficial peace.
The various branches of the Jiang family could only watch as Jiang Xiucheng’s face flashed with a fleeting moment of delight upon seeing the incoming call. Then, his expression sank, and before he could even maintain his outwardly calm facade, he stood up, pushed open the door, and went out to the balcony.
The mountain wind of the Swiss night swept through, carrying Sang Li’s tearful voice from the phone like a knife scraping against bone.
Jiang Xiucheng gripped the phone tightly, softening his voice: “I’ll arrange a flight to head back right now, Baobei. First, I’ll have a friend go pick you up. Then you can go home and sleep. When Baobei wakes up, you’ll see your husband, alright?”
Expensive luxury shoes were usually not comfortable to wear.
The cement ground of this market still retained the chill of early spring, seeping through the thin lambskin soles of Sang Li’s shoes and freezing him all over.
Being exceptionally picky, he squatted for a while only to find it uncomfortable. Sniffling, he looked around. Apart from the vegetable vendor who had a chair to sit on, there wasn’t a single empty seat left, yet Sang Li didn’t dare ask them for a chair.
Cowardly yet fierce only within the comforts of home, Sang Li finally shuffled over with his painful feet to pick up two unwanted red bricks, stacked them together, and placed his pumpkin hat on top as a cushion, making himself a small stool.
Pitifully sitting with his waist still exposed, Sang Li neatly pressed his legs together on his little stool. Hearing that he wouldn’t see his husband within ten minutes, the last glimmer of light faded from his bright eyes.
Looking like a kindergarten child whom no one came to pick up after school, he lowered his head, hugged his knees, curled up around himself, and asked in a small voice: “Then when will your husband’s friend get here?”
Sang Li wiped his face, accidentally smearing the black soot from the bricks onto the tip of his nose. With no idea what to do, he just held his phone with his whole heart: “Can you tell him to come a little faster? I am a little scared.”
“He’ll be here in ten minutes. Be a good boy and wait right there,” Jiang Xiucheng coaxed Sang Li with matchless patience. “I’ll have him take you to buy that cherry tiramisu you like most first, and you can also have a three-scoop ice cream. You can go home to sleep after you finish eating, okay?”
Sang Li nodded, looking very earnest: “Okay.”
After a moment, Sang Li spoke up in a small voice again: “Husband, don’t hang up the phone.”
“Alright, I won’t hang up,” Jiang Xiucheng said, his heart twitching with a painful pang. “I’ll stay with you.”
Sang Li let out an affirmative murmur, pressing his lips together and falling silent. The call was quiet enough that his light, shallow breathing could be heard.
Time ticked by quietly for several minutes.
Suddenly, Sang Li let out an exclamation and abruptly stood up.
Oh no, he had forgotten he was still live-streaming!
In his rush to call Jiang Xiucheng just now, he had casually shoved his other phone, the one with the live stream running, into his clothes pocket. But as they talked, he had completely forgotten all about it!
Flustered, Sang Li fumbled wildly around in his pocket. In the process, the phone he was using to talk to Jiang Xiucheng accidentally slipped from his hand, hitting the ground with a soft thud and instantly going black.
He hurriedly lowered his head to pick up the phone he was using to talk to his husband, but as he took a step forward, his foot tripped hard over the two bricks serving as his stool. Instantly losing his balance, he cried out: “Ah!”
As he pitched forward, the hand Sang Li had kept inside his pocket finally managed to grab hold of the phone that was live-streaming.
The phone screen was still lit, tilting forward along with Sang Li’s motion, and thus appeared the legendary flat-ground fall!
At a time like this, Sang Li couldn’t spare a thought for the phone!
His face covered in panic, the very first thing he did as he fell was to use both hands to cover his face.
Don’t hurt Li Li’s pretty face, don’t hurt Li Li’s pretty face, don’t hurt Li Li’s pretty face!
The live-streaming phone also dropped to the ground as Sang Li let go. Because the drop height was very low, apart from a brief shake, the live stream feed remarkably did not disconnect.
The moment they were thrust back into the light, the live chat flooded with comments:
What kind of stream puts you in solitary confinement these days? They finally let me out of the dark room! That being said, the anchor’s voice is so tender, and his husband’s voice sounds great too. They feel so sweet together. Confirmed, it’s the voices of a little couple that kept me going through the black screen. You guys can ship two guys? Get lost, homosexuals! Judging from what the anchor said, his husband can charter custom flights? He looks genuinely loaded. A real rich guy? Lmao, it’s all an act to flex, you guys actually believe this? Shit, when he fell on the ground just now, I saw the anchor’s face. Did anyone else see it? I saw it. Such a fairy-descending-to-earth face. This is what I deserve for lying flat on a vegetable market floor. Is this level of appearance even real? Why aren’t you going to chase your dreams in showbiz with looks like that? Thanks, I’m already satisfied. Stop attacking the anchor, start appreciating the beauty. The vegetable market floor looks so cold, can pretty bro or sis open their legs and sit on my face to feed me warm water?
Sang Li couldn’t spare a single thought for the live chat.
Watching the dirty, rough ground rush closer and closer, he despairingly counted down in his mind:
Three!
Two!
Huh?
A strong hand grabbed him by the back collar like a kitten, hauling him back up right at the critical moment before he could have a hard collision with the earth.
Immediately afterward, a teasing and playful voice came from behind him:
“Is this some kind of special greeting?”
With a flick of his wrist, the man hoisted Sang Li up, set him back on his feet, and said: “Yo, look at you, a little smutty-faced cat.”
Sang Li looked up blankly, not understanding what a smutty-faced cat meant.
Casually pulling a handkerchief from his trench coat, the man tossed it over: “Wipe your face, or people outside will think I’m abusing you.”
Sang Li: “…”
“You’re the smutty-faced cat.”
Unhappily pulling a face, Sang Li gave himself a messy, random wipe and threw the handkerchief back: “Your handkerchief smells horribly of roses, your taste is so bad!”
The man raised an eyebrow, then chuckled: “You’re even being picky. If it weren’t for…”
Just as he was about to say something, he seemed to acutely notice the phone lying on the ground. His expression paused slightly for a moment as he bent down, picked up the phone, and expressionlessly tapped to end the live stream.
“Don’t go starting random live streams from now on.”
The man handed the phone back to Sang Li: “I’ll let it slide this time, but next time I’m going to charge Jiang Xiucheng a defamation fee.”
Sang Li’s feet still hurt terribly. He looked at the man with a sliver of hope, then decided it probably wasn’t a good idea. Dejectedly taking back his phone, he unhappily questioned: “Is your defamation fee worth that much?”
“Oh, it’s worth a fortune!”
The man was probably still quite young, with distinctly debonair facial features, possessing a textbook peach-blossom face. When he slanted the outer corners of his eyes to look at someone, it carried a very aggressive aura: “I don’t know how many celebrities want to get into a scandal with me, but don’t even think about it. I’m straight.”
Sang Li was left speechless: “I’m not a celebrity.”
The man let out an exclamation of realization: “Based on your live stream, I thought you wanted to debut too. But come to think of it, Jiang Xiucheng probably wouldn’t agree anyway. He cares quite a bit about you.”
“My husband loves me super much!”
Glaring angrily at the person, Sang Li puffed out his cheeks: “Besides, my husband has great taste, completely unlike you!”
“Fine, whatever.”
The man gave a casual shrug: “Then you can just wait for your husband in this market full of chives smell. He’ll be here to pick you up in fifteen hours.”
As soon as he finished speaking, he suddenly leaned in close to Sang Li, hooking the corner of his lips into a smile: “Right, forgot to tell you. They clear out, close the doors, and turn off the lights here at six in the evening. By then, you’ll be all alone in the dark, pitch-black mega market. Who knows…”
“You’re not allowed to say it!”
Terrified, Sang Li turned as pale as a sheet, instinctively grabbing hold of the man’s hand: “You, you… Sorry, I didn’t mean to talk back to you. Don’t leave me here all alone.”
For some unknown reason, the man instinctively glanced down at the hand that had latched onto his arm.
White, slender, and tender.
At a glance, it was a pair of hands that had been pampered far too well, just like the person attached to them, strikingly gorgeous.
He suddenly recalled Jiang Xiucheng saying in the past that he didn’t like bringing his family member out to meet people, followed by an offhand joke about how it was a good thing he was straight and might bring him over to meet him another day.
Good thing he was straight.
He only liked pretty women.
Shao Wenxing withdrew his gaze, pulled his hand back as well, and walked straight ahead: “Keep up. The car is outside, I’ll take you home.”
After walking several steps, he glanced back, only to see Sang Li still standing in place with tear-filled eyes, not moving an inch.
Shao Wenxing: “What is it now, princess?”
Sang Li’s feet hurt so much he couldn’t walk a single step, yet he was too embarrassed to ask a stranger to carry him. Standing in place, he stubbornly shuffled forward two tiny steps, his eyes welling up with water: “You…”
After hesitating for a long time to gather his courage, Sang Li spoke in a very thin voice:
“Can you carry me on your back?”